This invention relates to a traffic barricade for placement adjacent a road hazard to absorb the impact of the collision of a moving vehicle with the hazard. More particularly, this invention relates to the use of moderately resilient toroidal members, such as tires, configured in a network to protect the vehicle and the operator thereof from serious damage.
With an ever increasing emphasis on traffic safety, numerous types of devices have been developed to provide a protective shield around permanent road hazards so that should a vehicle go out of control and into the direction of the hazard, damage to the vehicle, its occupants and the hazard itself will be kept at a minimum. The crudest of these devices is the common guard rail which, when placed adjacent a hazard, will tend to force the vehicle to glance back toward the road. However, it is well known that often, particularly at high speeds, vehicles may jump guard rails or break the same thereby limiting the effect thereof. In addition, not only can contact with the guard rail itself prove damaging to the vehicle and its operator, but also the glancing blow will often move a vehicle, now out of control, back into moving traffic.
As an alternative to the rigid guard rail, other types of more cushioned barricades have been developed. Some of these barricades utilize sand, liquid or gas filled structures which usually break upon impact in an attempt to cushion the force of the collision. Unfortunately these types of barricades tend to be expensive to manufacture, must be replaced after even small impacts, and often tend to be too resilient such that energy is transferred back to the vehicle rather than absorbed.
Because of the abundant availability of used vehicle tires with little uses for them and because of their moderately elastic nature, a number of barricades have been developed utilizing vehicle tires wich would otherwise be scrapped. One such device, as shown in Bruner, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,934,540, issued Jan. 27, 1976, utilizes vertically oriented tires partially embedded in reinforced concrete as a barrier. Another patent, Walker, U.S. Pat. No. 3,661,359, issued May 9, 1972, utilizes vertically oriented tires filled with a liquid such that the liquid will blow out upon impact. Such devices present problems in that the former will not sufficiently absorb the impact of the vehicle, being mounted in concrete, and the latter will not sufficiently absorb high speed collisions, there being a tendency for the vehicle to be severely damaged by the barricade itself and possibly continue moving through the diameter of the single tire to contact the hazard itself.
In order to provide a better clearance between the hazard and the point of impact, Hildreth, U.S. Pat. No. 3,951,384, issued Apr. 20, 1976, discloses a plurality of stacked tires lying on the ground in tangential contact. The tire stacks are filled with crushable containers to provide additional energy absorption. However, tires stacked in a fashion as taught by this patent provide a rather rigid barricade and one which can almost be as dangerous as the hazard itself because the force of the collision is absorbed in one direction only.